Chocolate As Bookends
A Q&A interview with Kathryn Laverack of Cocoa Encounters
It’s that time of year when we are encouraged to deck the halls with boughs of holly, yet some of us are returning from shopping sessions with full bags and exhausted empty hearts, not able to retail-therapy our way out of how difficult this season can be. Missing people, missing places, or perhaps worse of all, feeling like we’re missing something. Often, we need the light of someone else reflected against us to recognize our own prismatic selves. We need people to believe in us—this tender non-material tribute to our existence, and as social beings, we long for community, purpose, and this sense of belonging.
From day one of my boutique chocolate business (WKND Chocolate, est. Denver, Colorado in 2016), I knew that people would play an important role in what I made. What I couldn’t have anticipated was that the community growth surrounding the foundation of the business would come from peers, not customers. Nor that from a tiny cottage-industry operation with adequate access to the internet, a literal world of humans would find each other, support each other in these open-access spaces, and simultaneously build their own businesses and meaningful work along the way. I feel privileged to have witnessed certain movements in craft chocolate grow, and recognize that like many microcosms, there are usually unsung heroes and gatherers supervising these shifts in culture and representation.
A chocolate friend and now Admin of the online community Well Tempered, Estelle Tracy of 37 Chocolates, has referred to community folk as “the weavers”—the people destined and determined to connect others. The people who excel at gathering persons around common interests, or who step-up in emergency situations, or lead by example in their communal spheres. They usually take on the role of ideation, organizing, leadership, execution, and perhaps most importantly, have and show empathy—not only tending to the needs of their community, but thinking about how individuals will be impacted by the outliers and inputs of the community itself.
However, communities in the 21st century are facing an uphill battle, as particularly in the West, we have accelerated the divide between individual successes and those of the collective. Recent texts express this modern dilemma, such as Mia Birdsong’s book, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community.
What then does a world with an attitude of ‘we’ not ‘me’ look like? What worldly items—such as chocolate—can be used to tell stories of our shared experiences and interconnectedness?
Kathryn Laverack is one of the outstanding women in chocolate wielding proverbial spools and threads as she strings around clusters of people, using her longterm love for literature and more newfound adoration for cacao and chocolate as complementary themes for her communal tapestries. She has been a founding member of this Substack, believing in me from its inception as a platform, and continuously supporting others around her.
In fact, what you see here in this newsletter is, in a big way, an effort of the collective. Kathryn’s—and your—subscription hold a place in each of my posts, and many other micro-batch entrepreneurs that wish to build bridges…not as feats of engineering, but constructed spaces for crossing worlds together, arriving at new or familiar destinations knowing the light on in the window is for you, and the chocolate served at the table an invitation to get to know each other and what might be possible if we believe in us.
Conversations in Cocoa with…
Name: Kathryn Laverack (she/her)
Business Owner and Consultant at: Cocoa Encounters
Location: Louth, England
Social links: Instagram & Twitter
Bio: Kathryn Laverack of Cocoa Encounters is an International Chocolate Judge, Certified Chocolate Taster and teacher with the International Institute of Chocolate and Cacao Tasting (IICCT). Kathryn is based in Louth, Lincolnshire and delivers entertaining and informative individual and group sessions for companies and private parties, online and in-person. As a chocolate educator Kathryn delivers workshops in primary schools, private teaching and tasting lessons and talks and tasting demonstrations to local groups and organisations.
Image credit: Kathryn offering a talk at the Craft Chocolate Takeover at Canopy Market by Cocoa Runners; photo by Cherrie Lo.
{Interview conducted via email correspondences, November 2022.}
Lauren: Which came first, your love of chocolate or books?
Kathryn: Well, I have loved both since childhood but books were definitely my first love. Nothing could beat the excitement and curiosity I felt when being read to as a child, and I still remember the day I brought home my first school reading. I was so proud. It was a Janet and John book called Here We Go written in the 1940s. Since then, my relationship with books and literature has been one of the constants in my life. As a child, I was never without a book. I would read by torchlight under my bed covers so that my parents didn’t know I was still awake and tell me to go to sleep. I was extremely lucky to grow up on a farm in rural Lincolnshire. I had freedom. I was always outside exploring, but it was a small world; we didn’t travel very far, a couple of trips to the Yorkshire coast were the only holidays a busy farming family could take and I needed more. Books were my access to the world, providing those classic windows and sliding doors.
Studying English, French and Spanish literature at school and then Hispanic and American literature at university shaped my career and view of the world. I discovered Austin and Woolf, Calderón and Lorca, magical realism, Emily Dickinson and Hemingway, Heidegger and Kristeva and savoured the emotions, encounters and every tiny of bit of knowledge that they brought me. I learnt to appreciate the rewards of critiquing and discussing books; the need to share that has never left me. Time spent in the company of a book is still one of my greatest pleasures but the opportunity to connect with and learn from other readers has become more precious to me as life has moved on.
After a career in international marketing, I returned to Lincolnshire to bring up my children. I didn’t realise at the time, but moving meant I was really going to need those windows and sliding doors again. I had been instrumental in setting up one of the first community book clubs in Lincoln in the 1990s in collaboration with the local library. Our claim to fame was that our group was visited and filmed by Gryff Rhys Jones for his BBC TV programme The Bookworm (editor’s note: you can watch a Youtube video of the show featuring Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at min 17:30, as well as Roald Dahl’s confident commentary on his knowledge and authorship). A few years later a friend and I started up the Louth Literary Coven book club which became a monthly meet-up of female kindred spirits. It became a community of curious minds, and unashamedly a bit of wine drinking too. It is no exaggeration to say that I have treasured each and every one of our gatherings and the books we have shared.
One of the great advantages of a book club is that you get to read different genres and authors: books that you would perhaps never have chosen for yourself. It’s also a chance to re-read and see how, sometimes, the same words reflect back at you a different version of yourself.
My relationship with chocolate has taken a slightly different trajectory. Just as many children of my age and older were brought up on Janet and John books, just as many were weaned on Milky Ways, Finger of Fudges and, if you were really lucky, the odd Galaxy bar. Interestingly, the Janet and John books, featuring a brother and sister growing up in a sweet, middle-class nuclear family, are now ridiculed for their irrelevance to the experience of most children. Sadly, there has been no similar disdain developed for the consumption of the Mars and Cadbury chocolate we grew up with. Growing up in chocolate terms in the UK can be as simple as progressing from a Milky bar to a bar of Diary Milk, which is still hailed as the UK’s most popular chocolate bar.
Lauren: At what point did you start to recognize that there were other categories of chocolate outside of supermarkets and high street chains? Do you remember a particular transformational bite or experience that confirmed you needed to keep exploring chocolate?
Kathryn: My recognition of the differing character of chocolate came much later in life. I was introduced to the idea of single origin chocolate about twelve years ago by my sister’s partner who is a chocolatier in Yorkshire. He taught me that there was a way to taste chocolate and that chocolate, depending on where it was grown, had the potential for different flavour profiles. I headed to a book to find out more: Chloe Doutre-Roussel’s The Chocolate Connoisseur. Chloe pointed me to bars from Valrhona, Michel Cluizel and Domori and my first experience of ‘grown-up’ chocolate. The real excitement however, didn’t hit me until a year later when I walked into my local deli and found a range of bars from Duffy Sheardown, who happened to make chocolate just down the road from where I lived. I saw the origin names Venezuela, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Peru. I bought a different one each week and that was when I realised I had found a new type of window onto the world, one that connected me to the people and continents that had fascinated me when I was studying, working and travelling but then I was only reading about in books.
Lauren: There are a couple catch phrases at the moment: chocolate sommeliers and chocolate educators—which do you most closely identify with and do you distinguish between the two at all?
Kathryn: Interesting question and I think an important one. I see the logic of using terms like sommelier that are already understood by our target audience, but being a wine or tea sommelier relates to a particular role and usually a qualification in sourcing, selecting and serving which is not what I do, so I have never used the term sommelier myself. I have always referred to myself as a certified chocolate taster and chocolate educator, and I only adopted the title of educator after gaining a qualification in teaching and learning. I now teach with the International Institute of Chocolate and Cacao Tasting (IICCT), deliver primary school workshops and my discovery experiences follow my curriculum of Taste, Transparency and Craftsmanship, so I feel I have earned the title of educator.
There is an inherent difficulty in this term for describing the entirety of what I do. The term educator assumes a need to be educated, and education and training certainly have their place; through my work with the Institute I see how pivotal they are in the endeavours to create those recognised standards and practices we need to promote the value of fine chocolate. However, my website states: “The world of fine chocolate is not an exclusive one; given a little knowledge and guidance, we can all enjoy a sensory journey of discovery”. I really believe that and spend a great deal of my time telling people that. People in the supply chain, retailers, tasters and enthusiasts need to be educated to elevate the position of fine chocolate, but through my talks, book pairings, wine pairings, cocktail evenings and discovery events I am simply introducing people to the idea of fine chocolate and its complexity, inspiring a curiosity about something they generally didn’t even know existed and doing so in a way that connects with something they already have a passion or enthusiasm for. There is a difference here.
Since you asked me this question, I have been thinking about it, and talking to people about what I do, and I was talking to an artist who asked me if the term ‘animateur’ would be more suitable: someone whose role is to engage audiences with a new or unfamiliar form of art by bringing it to life for that person. That is what I do. I am bringing the world of chocolate to life for that person. I am going to borrow another term for this element of my work, then I am going to borrow this one and be a chocolate animateur. What do you all think?
Lauren: Was there a book that opened a world of taste or exploration for you? (Even if that was through another food/beverage.)
Kathryn: Books are important of course, but the world of taste, I have to say, was really opened up to me through travel rather than books. I was seriously lacking in taste education growing up on a farm in Lincolnshire. I knew what fresh produce tasted like, but our diet could only really be described as plain. You have no idea how hard it was for my mum to introduce anything as exotic as garlic or spices into our food. My childhood coincided with the beginnings of the UK’s love affair with sugar and fat pumped, processed food; exotic in the UK in the 70s was a Findus Crispy Pancake or, if you were lucky, a trip to the only Chinese restaurant in town for something remarkably similar - battered pork balls in a bright red sauce. So, travel, first to Europe, then Asia and Brazil, was my introduction to the world of flavour.
Having said that, it was a book written by science reporter Bob Holmes, The Science of Our Most Neglected Sense, that inspired my fascination with flavour perception. Holmes takes you along on his own journey of discovery, introducing you to the scientists, theories and practical exercises that revealed to him the complexities and mechanics of our perception of flavour. So accessible and easy-to-read.
Lauren: What do books/stories and chocolate have in common?
Kathryn: This may have already become apparent when I talked about my love of books and book clubs. The need to share and critique felt by many book lovers, I also see in chocolate enthusiasts. We love to gather. We may taste, write and review alone, but we also want to share and compare our latest finds and taste experiences. Our interpretation of both books and chocolate are also similar; it involves a combination of our primary, sensory experiences and with our personal lived experience and knowledge of the world.
The question then is not so much what do books and chocolate have in common but what do chocolate lovers and book lovers have in common? And the simple answer is that when they get together there are rich discussions, a deeper understanding and a sense of community. For me, combining the two is just impossible to resist.
Lauren: That’s an important distinction! Thinking about books and chocolate, how do you go about weaving relationships and crossovers between the two?
Kathryn: Rather than pairing one book to one chocolate bar, I am usually choosing a selection of bars for a book club session, chosen to help us understand the nuances of the book we have read and the chocolate we are going to taste. I use the same approach as I do for any pairing, the one Projet Chocolat’s ‘Chocolate Pairing Guide’ encourages us to take: to use “curiosity and a sense of play”.
You can use direct links: the book and chocolate are both crafted either by a maker or an author; a book has a setting and a bar has an origin; they each have a style and technique. Or you can take the subject or themes of the book to explore any aspect of chocolate and its place in the world: genetics, farming, trade, ethics, history and culture for example.
You identify the crossovers: they can be anything. They can be fun or trivial or they can be deeply intellectual or seriously political; it doesn’t matter, they just need to spark exploration, conversation, and learning. This is what makes a successful pairing.
Pairing chocolate with Gabriel García Márquez’s Chronical of a Death Foretold, for example, was quite straightforward. I chose bars made with beans from Colombia, then we explored the themes of masculinity and symbolism of flowers and purity through the flavour notes. Reading Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These – a story of the exploitation of single mothers and their labour by the Catholic Church’s Magdalene Laundries in Ireland – served as a stark reminder of the abuses of Indigenous peoples in the Americas in the history of chocolate and the continued abuse of slave labour in the current supply chains, so my choices were bars from Venezuela and Brazil and a discussion of the marketing of Tony’s Chocoloney.
Some take a little more thought. A character study of a middle school math teacher from Maine, USA, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, called for a different approach. Her character is revealed through a series of short stories. She may be the main character or simply referenced in each. My pairings followed a similar technique, a character study of Peruvian Maranon beans. The Solkiki bars related to the author/maker technique. They illustrated how Iris and Bob at Solkiki unveil the character of the beans by using them as the flavour focus in the plain bars or using them in juxtaposition with other ingredients where they either remain the centre or become the background notes. It was great fun then to discuss the relationships between the ingredients and the book’s characters they suggested to us.
So, you see that this is really aimed at book clubs and active readers. If reading is not your thing, then I will find some other way to make chocolate relevant to you and inspire your curiosity.
Lauren: At Cocoa Encounters, you have dedicated a large portion of your own energy to lifting up #WomenInChocolate; tell us about why supporting women is important for you personally and, if you’d like, for the industry on a whole.
Kathryn: I’m a farmer’s daughter and I have a brother, so my gender means that I could never be a farmer but I continued to work in male-dominated environments with the associated reminders or what I could or couldn’t do as a woman. I have also met exceptional women and men along the way who have encouraged me to ignore these boundaries and realise my potential. The chocolate community in particular is full of such people. People who are dedicated, passionate and brave, who are striving to build a different type of industry: one that is fairer and more sensitive to the issues of gender. It pains me to learn of the experiences of women in some of the origin countries where gender plays a much greater role. I have already received so much peer support from other women in chocolate; I have benefitted from it and I know the value of it and I want to return that in any way I can and to encourage that support, right along the supply chain.
Lauren: As someone who leads experiential tastings, where do you envision chocolate education in the future, or hope it will be? What role do consumers need to play in this equation?
Kathryn: Let’s not underestimate the need for education and the difficulty in engaging consumers even with the appeal of experiential tastings. It is going to take a great deal more education and marketing for consumers to even recognise that the fine chocolate sector exists. This is made more difficult, in part, by the industrial makers ability to identity and counter consumer concerns through reassurances of sustainability, fair trade, the empowerment of women and even “the purity of cocoa flavours” (referencing Callebaut’s 2nd Generation Chocolate campaign) and in part by the lack of visibility of fine chocolate. Here in the UK, other than online, the chances of encountering a fine chocolate bar and recognising it are still very small. I don’t see consumers demanding more from their chocolate very soon. Educators, retailers and makers need to join forces in the design and marketing of tastings and creating rituals of consumption that encourage repeat purchase and the exploration of difference.
Lauren: If you had two wishes that would be granted for the cacao and chocolate world/community, what would they be?
Kathryn: Oh, so many wishes.
Wouldn’t it be fabulous if our taste in chocolate developed in the same way as our taste in books? If our curiosity and desire to seek out new experiences and more nuanced tastes was associated with chocolate in the same way as it is with wine? If there were as many chocolate tasting clubs as there are book clubs and wine tasting clubs, and as many shops that sell craft chocolate too—that would be amazing!
I also wish that in the West we had more rituals that involved the appreciation of chocolate because, to me, this is what is needed to change our relationship with chocolate. Currently, our main reasons for buying chocolate are for self-reward and gifting. I don’t wish to squander these precious wishes, I know I should really be asking for the redistribution of power along the supply chain, one that puts producers in a stronger position and allows them to decide for themselves what crop to grow and have the opportunity to be rewarded for using well-paid labour and producing a better quality crop, but, to make that sustainable, consumers need to have a different relationship with chocolate. Thus, that would be my wish.
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